Japan's Lost Generation

A Hikikomori film- Left Handed, "Tobira no Muko"

English director Laurence Thrush and executive producer Takao Saiki released "Tobira no Muko" (Left handed) back in 2009 and the film now is due for an official release in Japan. The film stars a former hikikomori who attended Apple Tree school in Saitama prefecture for troubled youth unwilling or unable to attend school. The film depicts the main character's descent into social withdrawal and the various factors that contribute to his state as a hikikomori.

You can read about the film in greater detail on the English website for the film: Tobira no Muko

And here is a subtitled Youtube trailer for the film:

~M.D.

CBC Article on Hikikomori

Back in 2010, I was interviewed about my previous research on hikikomori. The reporter and I sat for about an hour in the Shibuya Starbucks chatting about shut-ins in Japan. I tried to give him a broad picture of the issue and how it was portrayed in the media. I even said several times what I was stating was not my opinion but what others had said or how it was generally perceived. What he finally put to print is somewhat out of context and not the gist of what I was trying to tell him, but what's in print is done.

Hanging out with Japan's 'lost generation' - CBC NEWS

Its a good article and appears to be well researched. It was my understanding at the time of the interview that the piece was to be longer and in the main publication. Its a shame he had to shorten the length, but I think he did the best he could with the space he was given.

Personally, I dislike the usage of "pressure cooker" applied to the Japanese school system. I was telling the reporter this is how other people portray Japanese education, its not my viewpoint.

If forced to use sound bite imagery, I would prefer to think of the educational track in a Japan as a highway with too few off-ramps into adult life. Once you take an exit from the college track, there is no way to get back on the road. With globalization, options for adult re-education and re-skilling has become a common strategy in other nations in the labor market. The ability to go back to school and get a college degree/re-skill as an adult and be accepted into the labor force within a new career is a viable option in many globalized labor markets. Some stigma may still hold for those trying for employment in the most elite of corporations, however.

In Japan, globalization has caused many companies to downsize and resort to a contract-for-hire work force they can jettison at any time to stay profitable. However, unlike globalized corporations in other countries, many big Japanese companies still prefer to hire fresh 20-something college graduates as their regular employees with full benefits. The remainder of their work force are 'outside hires', contract workers: freeters.

Contract workers may have gone back to school as an adult or have worked for several years learning the same skills in the industry as regular hires. However, that on-the-job work-experience by contract hires is not considered valid on a job application by Japanese corporations. So re-skilling and adult education in Japan means, even if you can get hired into a middle class labor position, most likely you will be a contract worker with no real chance to become a full time employee at the "big" corporations the rest of your working life. You are relegated to a precarious working class existence in society with little job stability.

This is why there is a growing population of aged 30+ freeters (contract workers) in the Japanese work force. Freeters and NEET are basically the same group of Japanese workers either in contract employment (and show up in data as freeter) or unemployed after a stint working (and are classified in labor data as NEET) . Collectively, this marginalized population of Freeters and NEET are rapidly becoming Japan's new working class with no viable path to a mainstream middle class career. Many of these 30-something freeters want to start families or be bread-winners, but lack the job stability to settle down into family roles with any confidence.

~M.D.

Finally! Master's Thesis is available with direct link.

Awesome news!

I'm happy to report that the UMI/Proquest Dissertation and Thesis service has finally listed my Master's so that it's publicly available via the internet:

"THE REHABILITATION OF JAPANESE YOUTH WITH ACUTE SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL AT TAKEYAMA GAKKÔ, A HIKIKOMORI SUPPORT CENTER."

This should help those folks who often arrive at Japan's Lost Generation via google.com search or bing.com search on one of my older archived posts and then email me for more information and/or available research on hikikomori.

The links to useful research can be found on the right side of the blog under "My Published Research on Hikikomori", but here's a fast and easy direct link now to my thesis.

PS: thesis writing spammers who have been flooding my comments the past week hoping to link their questionable pre-written thesis sites should give up now. I filter comments. Normal comments get through, spam doesn't. Hmm. there's a potential paper right there...

~M. Dziesinski

ICJS Wakai Project Youth Conference: Youth Work in Contemporary Japan

I've had a busy summer in 2009, I thought my blog might be a good forum to discuss some events I attended as it relates to the focus of this blog.

The big event in June was attending and presenting at my second conference on my Master's thesis research topic, hikikomori. (My thesis is now available via the Proquest service as a downloadable pdf. You can find more details in a earlier post on the subject here. If you are attending a university, your institution should have a subscription to the Proquest service and you can get free access that way.)

The first conference was the 2008 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting (ASA) in Boston last summer in which I discuss and provide a free link to my paper as a PDF here. Actually the 2009 ASA Conference is being held in San Francisco August 8-11th. As much as I'd like to go this year as well, I've been pretty busy preparing for my dissertation research which starts in September, so I'll have to pass.

I was in Tokyo from June 25th to the 30th to present at Temple University's ICJS Wakai Project Youth Conference: Youth Work in Contemporary Japan. This is the third year the Temple University campus in Japan has held a Wakai Project Youth Conference. Last year the theme was youth and digital content this year its youth and work, which is my area of research interest, so I went ahead and applied to present.

A PDF of all the presentation abstracts and conference schedule is available here.

I was very excited to be able attend this conference and doubly so when I was selected to present on day two of the conference.

One reason was due to the fact that the presenters for day one of the conference were Mary Brinton (Harvard University), Genda Yuji (Tokyo University) and Kosugi Reiko (Japan Institute of Labor). As a researcher, I have cited their publications numerous times in my own papers and their work is who I go to first in order to get a solid quantitative picture of what's happening in Japan's contemporary labor markets. So you can imagine, it was really rewarding to hear them present in person about their research.

I should point out that a great deal of economic and labor related data on Freeters, NEET and hikikomori has been produced by the Japan Institute of Labor (JIL for short) over the last decade. The researchers there are primarily economists, but thier analysis on issues relating to Japanese youth labor and Japanese government policy is top notch. Even if you are a psychologist or anthropologist and looking at issues relating to specific populations of Freeter, NEET, Hikikomori, et.al., for which you intend to perform an ethnographic study on, it's constructive to understand the macro structural context of the national labor scene and Japanese labor policies in which these young Japanese find their lives situated within.

So, I found the Temple University conference very constructive on many levels.

Personally, it was the first time in five years that I had been in Tokyo, and was the first time in ten years that I actually stayed and explored Tokyo rather than just passing through to another destination. As with any big metropolis, some landmarks remain the same while the character of the areas around them morph into something totally new. Yoyogi, Akihabara (now nicknamed Akiba), Harajuku and Shinagawa to name a few areas that are familiar and yet, so very different from the late 1990s when I last lived in Tokyo.

Professionally, I met some fascinating people doing very intriguing research. I look forward to catching up with them when I set up shop in Tokyo in September. And so many anthropologists! Talk about culture clash. I had more than a few vigorous conversations about theoretical framing over beers. It was great fun. All in all, I was very fortunate to have gone to the conference.

I had heard that they may be interested in gathering all the presentations at the conference into an edited book. But that remains unconfirmed. In the meantime, here's an abstract of my presentation:

Building a Working Class Future: Rehabilitating Middle-class Hikikomori with Normalized Working-Class Expectations.

Michael DZIESINSKI

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Hikikomori are Japanese youth who shut out contact with society by hiding within parents’ homes for months or even years. During these long periods of isolation from traditional school and work environments, hikikomori lack the socialization needed for adulthood. Due to the established school-to-work system in Japan, youth with a history as hikikomori have limited options for reentry into society as middle-class adults. This paper is based upon primary field data collected over a ten-month period at a private rehabilitation institution for hikikomori in Tokyo, Japan. Over the three years of this program, hikikomori youth are exposed to daily social rehabilitation structured around an idealized working class norm of conduct through group participation, routinization, and repetition. This process of hikikomori rehabilitation also takes on the dimensions of gender and class socialization: the normalization of hikikomori youth with middle class backgrounds into a more viable adult gendered working class identity.

~M. Dziesinski

A very good Research Article on Hikikomori

For those who have asked about further research materials on hikikomori.

First off, I would refer you to the bibliography of my last paper titled "From Failed Sons to Working Men: Rehabilitating Hikikomori". I have always found looking at the Bib of a good paper great groundwork for further inquiry. If you would like to use the sources cited from my last published paper you can download a PDF here .

Also, here is an outstanding research articles on hikikomori.

This is an excellent piece by Andy Furlong from the University of Glasgow that manages to tie together hikikomori, freeters and the current labor market issues in Japan.

Sociological Review, Volume 56 Issue 2, Pages 309 - 325, Published Online: 18 Apr 2008

Title "The Japanese hikikomori phenomenon: acute social withdrawal among young people"

Abstract:

Although rare in the west, in Japan and in some other advanced countries on the Asian-Pacific rim, there is a popular perception that there has been a significant increase in the numbers of young people who withdraw socially for protracted periods of time (referred to by the Japanese term 'hikikomori'). This paper describes the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan, considers evidence relating to its prevalence and examines views about the causes. I argue that the tendency to think of hikikomori as a homogeneous group characterised by psychological malaise is misleading and that withdrawal and disengagement can also be linked to changing opportunity structures. The collapse of the primary labour market for young people and the growing prevalence of a precarious secondary sector has led to a situation in which traditional and deep-rooted norms are undermined and young people forced to find new ways of navigating transitions within a highly pressured and rigid system. Under these circumstances, acute withdrawal often represents an anomic response to a situation where tradition no longer provides adequate clues to appropriate behaviour rather than as a malaise reducible to individual psychologies.

There are no direct PDF downloads I am aware of but it is available online via Wiley Inter-science for purchase. For those readers affiliated with a university or research institution you should be able to access a copy of the Journal Sociological Review for free via your library system.

Furlong is a good researcher and reaches a great many conclusions I did is, I admit much more sophisticated in his analysis. Also he had the advantage of research funding and many years of experience over me. I highly recommend his book:

Furlong, A. & Cartmel, F. 2006, Young People and Social Change: New Perspectives, 2nd edn, Open University Press, Buckingham, UK.

FYI, I will be posting citations on the blog in the American Sociological Association (ASA) citation style using my Sente 5 Database (would the good folks at Third Street Software please, please publish an official ASA Bibliography Format? All I can find is a user created one in the forums).

~M. Dziesinski

Asian Studies Master's Thesis on Hikikomori

Okay,

After several years of pain and suffering I finally finished my Master's Thesis on my hikikomori research done from 2003-2004. And for all those hours of work I got a nifty cap December 2008:

...And a second Master's Degree. Though I don't think you can put two "MA"s after your name in correspondence except for humorous effect:

Michael Dziesinski MA MA

Back on topic.

Yeah, I know, publishing four years later is a bit pitiful- but you try doing two graduate programs at the same time see how much that slows you down.

Here's the Abstract:

Hikikomori, coined by Tokyo Psychologist Saito Tamaki, describes a trend of Japanese youth, primarily male, who shut out contact with society by hiding within their parents’ homes for months or years at a time. In the process, these hermits become truants and school refusals, failing out of school and work through their long periods of seclusion. Further, reentry into society as middle-class adults is difficult for those with a history of acute social withdrawal. This study examines Takeyama, a private rehabilitation institution for hikikomori in Tokyo, Japan. Over the three years of Takeyama’s rehabilitation program, hikikomori youth are exposed to daily social rehabilitation structured around an idealized norm of conduct through group participation, routinization, and repetition. The process of hikikomori rehabilitation at Takeyama also takes on the dimensions of gender and class socialization: the normalization of hikikomori youth with middle class backgrounds into a viable adult gendered working class identity.

My Master's thesis on the subject is available via Proquest:

"THE REHABILITATION OF JAPANESE YOUTH WITH ACUTE SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL AT TAKEYAMA GAKKÔ, A HIKIKOMORI SUPPORT CENTER."

It takes a few months to go up in their system (was posted in November) but I believe you will soon be able buy my thesis in PDF form online.

My information on this is a bit scanty at present as I'm waiting for a contact by Proquest on accessibility of my thesis. I will provide updates here as they become available. These things appear to take several months due to backlog.

~M. Dziesinski

Major Update on my Hikikomori Research

All Academic, a service for papers presented at conferences, has a nice page that provides an abstract and downloadable PDF of the paper I presented at the 2008 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting(ASA) in Boston last summer.

Titled "From Failed Sons to Working Men: Rehabilitating Hikikomori", this paper is taken from data collected for my Asian Studies Master's thesis research from 2003-2004 at a hikikomori rehab center. Please consider this paper an update superior to my previous research provided on this blog.

Here is the abstract of my ASA Boston paper:

The label of hikikomori, coined by Tokyo Psychologist Saito Tamaki, describes an increasing trend of Japanese youth, primarily male, that shut out contact with society by hiding within their parents’ homes for months or even years at a time. In the process, these youth become truants, failing out of school and work through their long absences from the outside world. Reentry into society in middle class adult roles proves a difficult barrier for recovered hikikomori due to institutional features of Japanese society. This paper examines Takeyama, a private rehabilitation institution for hikikomori located in Tokyo Japan. Over the three-year span of Takeyama’s rehabilitation program, hikikomori youth from middle-class backgrounds are exposed to daily social rehabilitation structured around an idealized norm of conduct through group participation, routinization, and repetition. My central research question for this paper examines how the process of hikikomori rehabilitation observed at Takeyama involves gender and class socialization. Namely, the normalization of male hikikomori youth with middle class backgrounds into a viable adult masculine identity entwined with a working class future.

CItation:

Dziesinski, M. , 2008-07-31 "From Failed Sons to Working Men: Rehabilitating Hikikomori" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Sheraton Boston and the Boston Marriott Copley Place, Boston, MA Online <APPLICATION/PDF>. 2008-12-16 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p242231_index.html

~M. Dziesinski

Hikikomori Reasearch Update and Other Things

Greetings Fellow Travelers,

This poor poor blog has fallen into disuse over the past few years and for that I greatly apologize. Over that time I have received a fair number of emails expressing interest in my hikikomori topic and for updates of the blog.

I thank those people for your continuing interest. I have always known that my topic was very much a niche area, that my intermittent posts, and my verbose blog style meant I would have a very tiny readership...if at all.

I figured those with interest would stumble upon my blog and that's fine by me. However, I always meant for Japan's Lost Generation to be a sounding board for my research. As much of my research material was unpublished I thought it prudent to keep that close to the vest until such time I had some copyright protection.

This concern was borne out by people who have contacted me directly in the last few years and then have subsequently released several publications that have come out in the interim of my blog's downtime. They have obviously built on my work posted on my Lost Gen blog but make no reference to me. That kind of dampened my enthusiasm to continue posting my unpublished research on my blog.

That's fine I guess.

In part, its my fault or not being quicker in getting my hikikomori work out there I have been lapped by others on the track, had I gotten my hikikomori work into an academic journal in 2005, I would have been one of the first in the English language academia to address the hikikomori issue in social science circles. In part, it is due to others being more established in the field and finding it easy to dismiss the work of a graduate student. But when you find the core of your ideas in another person's work it can be a bit frustrating.

Again, live and learn.

Welcome to my 2009 blog, enjoy your stay.

~M. Dziesinski

Q & A about Hikikomori Part 5

I was contacted via email by someone interested in the topic of hikikomori and posed me several excellent questions. I thought I’d post the questions and my answers to the blog as the answers might prove useful to others looking into the hikikomori issue. I’ll be posting the questions and answers over several blog entries.

Michael Dziesinski

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Hi M. Dziesinski, I am writing an essay on hikikomori, and as you worked on the subject, I would like to ask you a few questions about that:

I hope you will find these answers helpful (and that I got them to you in time).

Question 5:
Can you tell me why the phenomenon mostly concern teenagers and adults from 20 to 30? Why can’t it also concern older people? Can a person who is more than 30 become a recluse?

Actually, it does affect older people from time to time such as a salaryman who has lost his job or some such, but the majority who become hikikomori seem to be young people who are trying to rectify their direct personal experiences in society with the built-in hypocrisy that is inherent in a functional adult society.

The Japanese call it tatemae/honne, outside face/inner desires, but I would also say that George Herbert Mead’s essay ‘The Self’ is a more detailed assessment of the problem with hikikomori. Using Mead’s theoretical framework, hikikomori are unable to successfully integrate the individual and deeply personal desires of “I” with the more pluralistic “Me” that is defined by its role in society existent inside the mind of every individual.

Young people have not yet solidified these two halves of consciousness and won’t until they reach full maturity after many natural setbacks and disappointments that life metes out as the ‘reality’ of society settles in.

By contrast, working adults, dealing with the contradictions of daily life, have a hardened shell and are able to cope with the stresses that Mead’s two conceptions of ‘self‘ place on an individual. Therefore, undue stress on a young person can fracture these two ‘selves’, as an attempt is made to find ‘one truth’ to society; one which can never be found. The “I” remains and seeks separation from a ‘Me’ that causes anguish.

One solution is isolation, however suicide may be another extreme example which falls in line with Emile Durkheim’s theories in his 1897 work SUICIDE on the effects of upheavals in society on the individual. The ten year economic malaise in Japan and the end of lifetime employment for incoming 21st century company employees may be one reason many youth are questioning their lot in life and choosing social withdraw or suicide over the alternative of years of schooling with no reward at the end and no answers by society at large.

Q & A about Hikikomori Part 4

I was contacted via email by someone interested in the topic of hikikomori and posed me several excellent questions. I thought I’d post the questions and my answers to the blog as the answers might prove useful to others looking into the hikikomori issue. I’ll be posting the questions and answers over several blog entries.

Michael Dziesinski

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Hi M. Dziesinski, I am writing an essay on hikikomori, and as you worked on the subject, I would like to ask you a few questions about that:

I hope you will find these answers helpful (and that I got them to you in time).

Question 4:
Do you know whether hikikomori can reach out of their isolation by themselves, without professional help, or not? And if they can, how do they do?

Usually, this does not happen as long as the hikikomori remains in the environment that brought on the onset of the withdrawal: An unforgiving school system, parents who are too soft in their discipline, middle income families who can afford to ‘allow’ their child to go into isolation, a society that stigmatizes any perceived sickness so the family feels the pressure to hide their ‘sick’ member from the community.

Change these factors and pull the youth out of the environment in a measured way and they can begin to recover from the stagnation that isolation has wrought. However, not much can be expected if the child is left in the smothering shadow of an overly acquiescent mother, which is often the case with male hikikomori (look up ‘amae’).

While they can’t often reach out themselves due to the environment, ‘professional help’, IE psychologists or doctors, aren’t necessarily needed: some of the most effective support groups for hikikomori are volunteer or private schools as they don’t try to medicate hikikomori, but treat the malady like the social problem that it appears to be. Remove a hikikomori from his isolated environment, socialize him through peer interaction, and most respond favorably.

Q & A about Hikikomori Part 3

I was contacted via email by someone interested in the topic of hikikomori and posed me several excellent questions. I thought I’d post the questions and my answers to the blog as the answers might prove useful to others looking into the hikikomori issue. I’ll be posting the questions and answers over several blog entries.

Michael Dziesinski

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Hi M. Dziesinski, I am writing an essay on hikikomori, and as you worked on the subject, I would like to ask you a few questions about that:

I hope you will find these answers helpful (and that I got them to you in time).

Question 3:
Do you think hikikomori suffer from their isolation?

I believe that it is pain dealing with society that drives them into their isolation in the first place and because that pain is never dealt with, it festers inside them as they avoid it, ignore it, deny it, and hide from it.

That anguish builds over the time of their isolation and with no solutions to their social problem, they ‘over analyze’ the their problem in their heads as ‘what if?’ scenarios:

‘What if I had done this differently?’
‘What if I didn't let that group bully me?’

However, since they are in complete isolation, they are never able to act on their ‘solutions’ as they are still gripped by fear of the outside and the consequences of those very same ‘what if?“ questions they constantly ask themselves. The thing to bear in mind is in my research, the majority of hikikomori are NOT mentally ill, but are suffering from social anxiety or trauma. They are completely lucid and mentally acute; now imagine that you, a healthy and sane person, is put in isolation in a prison or mental institution: their rooms act in much the same way, as an isolation chamber where they are only left with their thoughts on how they came to be in the room alone. In such a state, you are going to become angry, frustrated, go into denial and yet retain cogent self awareness of your own situation as you are sane and lucid.

So yes, hikikomori suffer from their isolation as only a self-aware individual can.

Q & A about Hikikomori Part 2

I was contacted via email by someone interested in the topic of hikikomori and posed me several excellent questions. I thought I’d post the questions and my answers to the blog as the answers might prove useful to others looking into the hikikomori issue. I’ll be posting the questions and answers over several blog entries.

Michael Dziesinski

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi M. Dziesinski, I am writing an essay on hikikomori, and as you worked on the subject, I would like to ask you a few questions about that:

I apologize for this late response. I hope you will find these answers helpful (and that I got them to you in time).

Question 2:
Do the withdrawn communicate with the society through the internet?

Some do. But it is not a frequent occurrence. It has changed recently, but I suspect that is because of what I think is a ‘copycat’ phenomenon: young people fed up with their lives emulate true hikikomori but continue to communicate with the outside world on some level. Though at some point, these people become ‘true hikikomori’ inadvertently when the social stigma of the condition settles in.

However, true withdrawal is complete social isolation to the point that the person begins to become developmentally and socially stunted in his/her personal growth as they lack any human interaction. After several months or years, such withdrawn people stagnate mentally, though I would argue that this is not a mental illness as I have observed withdrawn people, who after several years of hikikomori behavior, soak up new interactions and learning like a sponge. Once out of the isolated environment and with guided help, they normalize quite quickly— within six months to a year.

Q & A about Hikikomori Part 1

I was contacted via email by someone interested in the topic of hikikomori and posed me several excellent questions. I thought I’d post the questions and my answers to the blog as the answers might prove useful to others looking into the hikikomori issue. I’ll be posting the questions and answers over several blog entries.

Michael Dziesinski

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi M. Dziesinski, I am writing an essay on hikikomori, and as you worked on the subject, I would like to ask you a few questions about that:

My apologies. My spam filter must have caught your previous emails. I also apologize for this late response. I hope you will find these answers helpful (and that I got them to you in time).

Question 1:
I know that both of hikikomori and otaku can read manga or play video games all day. But what’s the different between the two of them? Can’t the otaku be qualified as a hikikomori?

Not really.

First, otaku are people who are extreme fans who immerse themselves into their hobby to the point of alienating people, but they must maintain networks of communication with other ‘otaku’ in order to feed their habit. While ordering products on the web is becoming more common in Japan, otaku still must venture outside to support their interest in a particular hobby; they have to go out and interact with other people and they thrive on others knowing about their interest.

Second, while the behavior of otaku and hikikomori reading manga and playing video games on the surface may seem similar, their motivations are very different.

From my own direct experience in my field research, hikikomori read manga and play video games in part as activities which allow them to AVOID interaction with people and the possible shame and scorn they anticipate receiving in such interactions. It doesn’t matter if it’s a manga, a TV show, or a videogame- the purpose they do these activities is to take their mind off and mask the real problem in their lives; the pain of human interaction. I had one female hikikomori tell me that after several months she became bored with these activities and began to simply stare blankly at the wall for hours. Others might carve words in their room’s walls like “why?” or “who am I?” The point being, that unlike otaku, such activities are not an end unto themselves for hikikomori.

Hard Data on the Hikikomori- links to good Japanese sites

Here are links to several valuable Japanese sites that provide more reliable hard data on hikikomori than the secondhand reportage of the BBC and Asahi articles and their like on hikikomori which have been floating around the internet for the last four years.

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This first set of links are to Japan's Ministry of Health,Labour and Welfare's 2003 guidelines on hikikomori. Translated, it reads:

“Isn't that a hikikomori?”
A pamphlet intended for general questions about “Social Withdraw”
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/houdou/2003/03/h0303-2.html

“Guidelines for returning 'hikikomori' within the 10-20 age bracket to activities preserving mental health .”
Guidelines for dealing with 'Hikikomori' (Notice that this is the Final Version to be drawn up.)
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/topics/2003/07/tp0728-1f.html

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This site is interesting also. The title, translated into English, is: “ Center for the Health of Young People”.

The topic of the section I have linked to is:“Hikikomori and Childcare Anxiety”

You'll want to stick to the six light blue colored topics in the middle of the page. (The dark blue topics are about 'childcare anxiety', the yellow are “community topics”.)

Translated, the left column, from top to bottom, is:

Hikikomori?
What kind of condition is 'hikikomori'
An introduction to the definition of 'hikikomori'.
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/h-teigi/h-teigi.htm

Hikikomori Q & A
Common questions and inquiries,
Answered by psychologist Dr. Tamura.
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/h-qa/h-qa.htm

“Hikikomori Statistics”
The resulting changes in participants of the Center for the Health of Young People's consultation activities in relation to 'hikikomori'.
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/tokei/tokei.htm

And the three in the right column are:

For Families coping with (hikikomori)
A page on the method of supporting a family's approach to the situation of a 'hikikomori' (in the family) as well as directing attention towards the way the environment (is at home).
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/h-kazoku/h-kazoku.htm

From every standpoint
Father, Mother, Specialist; visiting the position of each respectively.
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/h-column/h-column.htm

An introduction on actions to cope with (hikikomori)
An introduction to useful activities on ways a family can continually keep at a hikikomori by the Center for the Health of Young People
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/taiou.htm

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For translation help:

The body of the text for all of the links above are in Japanese, so for the linguistically challenged, try plugging them in here:

Jim Breens WWWJDIC Server

Just cut and paste the url and see what that gets you.

Also try here:
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/

And here:
http://www.worldlingo.com/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html

...Though I find the translations by the last two not so useful.

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Finally, here is NHK's official site on hikikomori. Very fluffy bunny:
http://www.nhk.or.jp/hikikomori/

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Well, this post got a little longer than I intended, but it is pretty useful stuff so make of it what you will.

[If my translations are bad, well... that's why I'm training to be a sociologist not a linguist! If anyone is so inclined to provide better translations or even offer to translate the two Ministry of Health articles in English, I would be more than happy to host those translations on this blog and provide full credit to those who did the work. I would link them as PDFs on the left side of my blog under research links (Plus, you would make my life infinitely easier!). There is too little solid information on hikikomori in the English language. Currently, I have a half dozen books on the topic in Japanese, and if I had the resources (and natural language ability), that would be one of the projects I would be doing right now. It's a shame really, as that would be an excellent endeavor to undertake. Any takers?]

Searching for hikikomori in Japanese- what's it look like?

Note the graphic appearing in this entry to your right displays the two ways of rendering 'hikikomori', social withdraw, in Japanese. I have included it so if you ever have the desire to brave the world of Japanese web sites searching on the topic of hikikomori, you know what you are looking for (as for the rest of the web page in Japanese, well, you. are. on. your. own. *GRIN*).

1. The top version uses the verb 'hiku', to pull, rendered with the kanji or Chinese ideogram for it, combined with 'komoru', to retire, in the cursive script of Hiragana. (Hikikomori is Lit. 'to pull within and retire'.)

2. The second version is the entire word rendered in the cursive Hiragana script of Japanese.

3. The bottom line is the word 'hikikomori' in Romaji, Japanese written in the Roman Alphabet, hyphenated to denote the break point of each syllabic character of the Hiragana in the line just above it.

I'm not going to use this post to provide suitable search engine sites for Japanese but, if you want to try a search, here's a few:

http://www.google.co.jp/

http://www.amazon.co.jp

Newstart NPO: the Hikikomori support industry in Japan

Here is an interesting new article I dug up on http://www.weekender.co.jp/ that details a nonprofit organization, or NPO, in Japan with express purpose of helping socially withdrawn kids.

Called the 'Newstart NPO' center, it's setup seems similar to the one in which I did my field research, although I'm sure their methods and philosophy are different from Takeyama Gakko where I performed my own research. To the right is an image of Newstart founder Noki Futagami taken from the source article.

The article, titled "Newstart NPO offers a way back into the world for lost generation of Japanese ‘hikikomori social withdrawal children" is by Ian Priestly, and offers a pretty good glimpse of the hikikomori support industry, though I wouldn't say I agree with all of the recycled media discourse on hikikomori contained in the article, it is still a useful resource.

For the brave or language fluent, here is the direct link to Newstart's website in Japan.

UPDATE: Here is an English link to Newstart's website, though not as comprehensive as the Japanese site, it's useful.

Research, research, research.

Okay folks, I'm going to upload the research paper I wrote last year that does a survey on hikikomori topic. It's in PDF format and around 800k; feel free to peruse and use for your own work and articles, I only ask that you properly cite me as it's author if you do choose to use my content in an article, web page, or what have you. Professional courtesy and all that.

Note that this paper was written purely with available resources here in Hawaii at the time, so I had not yet done my field research at the Takeyama Gakkoh hikikomori rehabilitation center in Japan.

Feedback is welcome either via my email or in the comments for this entry. I'll check back occasionally and respond to any questions.

Here's the link: Hikikomori: Investigations into the phenomenon of acute social withdrawal in contemporary Japan by Michael Dziesinski

I'm also going to post the link in my Typepad links on one side of my blog so it's always available.

Cheers,

Mike Dziesinski

The pseudonym game: names changed to protect the innocent.

Currently in my thesis work, I’m working on a thick description of the facility in which I conducted my field research in 2003-04. This is going to be a ‘case study’, if you will, that will try as best as possible to paint a picture of how hikikomori, those suffering social withdrawal, are rehabilitated; at least in this facility anyway.

Due to legal reasons and concerns by my university about protecting the anonymity of my interview subjects, I conducted my interviews with a coding system and will assign pseudonyms to the individuals when referring to them in my thesis or here in this blog; I’m going to fictionalize the names and places where I did my field research. However, the stories and experiences I relate from my field research will be true, even if the names are pseudonyms to protect the subjects’ privacy.

I do this because my University demands it, and because it wouldn’t be fair to the staff and kids at the center where I did my research. Also, in the course of my interviews, the knowledge that I wouldn’t be using their real identities made the subjects more likely to answer with sincere honne rather than the more guarded tatemae that is prevalent in Japanese culture.

I’m going to call the rehab center I did my research Takeyama Gakkoh, 竹山学校、or TG for short. For the curious, that’s ‘Bamboo Mountain School’. For the name of the proprietor and his wife, who helps him run Takeyama, let’s call them Mr. Kazu Ishida and Mrs. Mizuho Ishida. “Ishida’、石田、 is ‘rock field’, Kazu is a pretty common male name in Japan, and Mizu-ho is ‘water child’. For the rest of the staff and students there, I’ll name them as the need arises.

For those academics, even armchair ones, reading this entry I’m curious about your opinion on this choice to use pseudonyms for the location of my research. Input from veteran field researchers would be most welcome.

I have no problem with anonymity for my research subjects, that was always my intention from the beginning, but I am a bit torn in so far as fictionalizing the name and place (only) of where I conducted my research. It makes me feel that my thesis will be on less concrete foundations than if I provided a easily verifiable place where others can also go if they choose to conduct further research on the topic. However, I am cognizant of the fact that fictionalizing peoples names while keeping name and location where they live and work factual makes it very easy to trace them back and therefore jeopardizes the promise I made, not to mention the trust they placed in me as a researcher. What do you think?